11 Enviable Traits Of Adults Who Played Video Games A Lot As Kids
Research shows a much different story about the way video games affect us than you probably know.
Krakenimages.com / Shutterstock While playing video games is often seen in a negative light, there’s a more positive side to video games than we tend to imagine. Contrary to what you might think would make sense, there are several enviable traits associated with adults who played video games a lot as kids.
When most of us think about kids who play a lot of video games, we picture them sitting glassy-eyed in front of a screen for hours at a time, which raises valid mental health concerns. But research has found that playing video games can boost mental health and social development. Video games can be good for kids’ ability to focus and help kids learn better in school, setting them up for a successful future.
Here are 11 enviable traits of adults who played video games a lot as kids
1. They have strong problem-solving skills
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One enviable trait of an adult who played video games a lot as a kid is their strong problem-solving skills. The American Psychological Association published a research study titled “The Benefits of Playing Video Games,” which reported that video games help kids develop more advanced problem-solving skills.
Strategic video games, in particular, boost problem-solving skills over other types of games. Kids who play role playing games showed improvements to their problem solving abilities in academic settings and got higher grades in school.
While parents might not understand why their kid is so obsessed with pretending to be a highly intelligent elf solving a treasure hunt in a magical mountain town, they can rest assured that it’s boosting their ability to solve problems, which becomes an enviable trait in adulthood.
2. They have enhanced cognitive abilities
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Another enviable trait of an adult who played video games a lot as a kid is their enhanced cognitive capabilities. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study reported on both the positive and negative effects of playing video games. The study involved almost 2,000 video-game playing kids, and the findings were fairly balanced between the beneficial aspects of playing video games and and potentially harmful effects.
While the researchers found that kids who play video games for three or more hours each day had higher measures of depressive symptoms and ADHD compared to kids who didn’t play video games at all, they also found that kids who played for three or more hours a day scored higher on cognitive skills testing that involved impulse control and working memory.
As Dr. Nora Volkow explained, “Numerous studies have linked video gaming to behavior and mental health problems. This study suggests that there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation.”
3. They’re more resilient
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An enviable trait of adults who played video games a lot as kids is higher resilience. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
Their research on video games showed that one of the benefits is the boost to how resilient kids learn to be, since playing video games means accepting that you can’t always win. Video games can act as tools to teach kids how to face failure and keep going, even when things don’t initially go their way.
The researchers posited that coping with losing in the land of video games helps kids build up their emotional resilience in real life, which they hold onto through adulthood.
4. They have better memory retention
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Having higher memory retention is an enviable trait of adults who played video games a lot as kids. Video games not only help kids learn, they help them remember what it is they've learned. As noted in the APA study, engaging in this activity is often seen as “intellectually lazy,” but in reality, video games can strengthen different cognitive skills, like reasoning, perception, and memory.
When kids play video games, they have to hold a lot of information in their minds at one time. They have to remember the route out of the abandoned city, if they have any hope of surviving the alien invasion orchestrated by Jupiter’s overlords.
From the outside, it might seem like kids are totally zoned-out when they play video games, but in reality, their minds are working at intense speeds, to remember everything they need to do to declare victory.
5. They have strong social skills
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We tend to picture kids who play video games as lone wolves without many friends, who sit in darkened bedrooms, the glow of the screen illuminating their pallid faces. But in truth, playing video games can instill them with excellent social skills.
As the authors of the APA study noted, “Multiplayer games become virtual social communities,” which means kids are making connections and working together on a common goal. They gain a deep understanding and appreciation for the value of cooperation and communication.
Video games aren’t always solitary activities. By involving immense levels of collaboration, kids learn how to rely on other people, which becomes an enviable trait to have as an adult.
6. They manage better stress better
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Adults who played video games a lot as kids have the enviable trait of being able to manage their stress in a mindful way. There are major emotional benefits to having fun for fun’s sake, which lowers stress levels and just makes people feel better.
We might not automatically think of playing video games as a form of mindfulness, but as Elon Musk explained on Joe Rogan’s podcast, they can inspire being very present in the moment.
“If I play a video game on extreme difficulty, I have to concentrate fully on the game,” Musk said. “It has a calming effect.”
“Anything that forces you to concentrate fully has a calming effect, sort of like a restoring effect, mentally,” he concluded.
7. They can regulate their emotions
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An enviable trait of adults who played video games a lot as kids is emotional regulation. They know they can’t always be the one to win the drag race through the back streets of a secret city, so they figure out how to deal with losing at a young age, which helps them handle the disappointments they’ll inevitably face as adults. If playing video games helps kids face their emotions directly, it’s a worthy activity, one that provides them with enviable traits, like being able to self-regulate.
Emotional regulation isn’t only focused on having hard feelings. Having the ability to self-regulate helps people handle excitement and happiness, too. There are undeniable benefits to being happy. As researcher Isabela Granic noted, “If playing video games simply makes people happier, this seems to be a fundamental emotional benefit to consider.”
8. They have higher spatial intelligence
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According to the results of the APA study, action video games can enhance someone’s ability to think about objects in three dimensions. As the study’s lead author, Isabela Granic, explained, “This has critical implications for education and career development, as previous research has established the power of spatial skills for achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”
During his conversation with Elon Musk, Joe Rogan referenced a study from 2007, which found that surgeons who regularly play video games make less errors. Authors of the study found that surgeons with past video game experience made between 32-47% fewer errors in surgery than non-playing colleagues.
“Your manual dexterity has to be extremely high,” Musk stressed. “So, you’re looking at things on screen and you’ve got, like, 10 milliseconds to react.”
Playing video games a lot as kids gives adults the enviable trait of higher spatial intelligence, which can put them on a successful career path in STEM.
9. They’re more creative
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Increased creativity is another enviable trait of adults who played video games a lot as kids. Playing video games puts kids in situations that enhance their imagination and expose them to many different environments and ideas, which allows them to be more adaptive while putting their creative side into action.
The APA study found that video games increase kids’ creativity, a boost that doesn’t hold true across other electronic platforms and activities, such as using computers or scrolling on phones.
10. They have better concentration skills
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Another enviable trait of adults who played video games a lot as kids is having better ability to focus. Their enhanced concentration skills come from focusing intensely on the video games they played as kids, where completing their spy mission was way more important than their mom calling their name to come to the dinner table.
Kids who play video games can tune into details at an extreme rate and think about several different strategies at once, helping them focus intensely as adults.
11. They learn new things easily
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Kids who play a lot of video games are able to learn new things easily as adults. Through their years of gaming, they learned how to adapt quickly to unknown situations and pick up new skills along the way. They were given top-secret assignments, and they hit the ground running. They didn’t hesitate to push themselves out of their comfort zone and take on challenges, a skill they transferred to their academic and professional lives.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.